Breaking Down a Giant Hubbard

When we were up at the family farm this past autumn, we were given a giant hubbard squash by one of the farmers near my in-laws.  This hubbard is about 20 pounds and to give you an idea of how large it is, I put my gardening glove on top of it.

My father-in-law said we should drop the squash on the pavement outside to break it into pieces, but since there's snow and ice on the ground, we decided to take a hammer to it.  Here is the hubs trying to crack it.

A couple of whacks later, and success at last.  We were storing this hubbard on our front enclosed porch since September.  It's pretty cool on the front porch, probably around the mid-40Fs.  So the squash kept very well.  However, we started noticing some black spots on the rind, so we knew we had to process the squash right away.

Cutting down the squash into managable pieces was quite the chore!  I decided to cut away all the "rind" and compost that.  Then take the inside flesh and cut it down into bite size pieces.  To break down the entire squash this way took me a whole hour!  The one thing I don't like about winter squash is how hard the rind is to cut through.

Here are the bite size pieces.  These all went onto lined baking sheets, and I baked them with olive oil drizzled on top.  The olive oil helps keep the squash moist.  This squash filled 5 baking sheets!  Hubbard squash tastes just like pumpkin.  In fact, many companies that make canned pumpkin puree add hubbard to the canned stuff because of the similar taste and texture to pumpkin.  However, in my opinion, I think hubbard is less moist in texture than a pumpkin.  It's also mildly sweet.  It does hold up well in baked goods and is why it is often substituted for pumpkin.

After baking the squash until fork tender, I let all the trays cool down.  When the squash was cool to the touch, they were placed into freezer bags.  We got 2 full bags out of it, which I am excited about.  I'll be making bread and soup out of this in months to come!